Existing comment:
Margaret Sanger, 1917
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Margaret Sanger Lampe and Nancy Sanger Pallesen, granddaughters of Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger, a writer and nurse, advocated for girls to know and control their own bodies - but only certain girls. Sanger believed that women who were poor or who had mental disabilities should not have children, in order to promote a "healthy" society.
While eugenics was popular in Sanger's time, today such ideas are offensive for devaluing certain lives. How do we reckon with this important but complicated historical figure? |